The Walhalla Coach Road

Thank Heaven for country buses, VLine and the motorcar. I have come to a realisation of how much they mean to us.

Imagine walking f rom Port Albert to Walhalla. Even on horseback, the journey would have been an ordeal.

I once helped make a short film on the coach road from Port Albert to Walhalla. We were assisted by Warren Curry, a walking encyclopaedia on the Port Albert and Yarram area, whose enthusiasm is only matched by his energy.

Our first stop was at the Old Port, where Angus McMillan had shipped his first loads of cattle out to Van Diemen's Land early in the 1840s. It was something of a battle through the scrub to the shoreline and it was possible to imagine that we were seeing it as McMillan had first seen it.

Until we came to the packed mud of the shore. The water is shallower now but there were signs of the old days all around us. Here were parts of a broken whiskey bottle with 'Imperial Quart' still visible.

There were several old bullets. Over here were a few rusty horseshoe nails. Over there was another. We even found a small iron hammer which had lain in the mud for how many years?

Probably none of these were relics of Angus McMillan's days, but they were still a link with the past. The Old Port has silted up now, and we found no sign of the original cattleyards or buildings.

Warren then took us into Port Albert itself. A short boat tour took us past the old Customs House and the Bond Store, past the hotel where the Laird of Glengarry's original cowshed became part of the hotel, I am told.

He took us into the museum and that is a must for any tourist who makes the trip.

There were pictures and models of countless old boats. There were photographs to make a historian's head spin.

There were documents spelling out a musty tale of trade and commerce.

There was a complete life-saving rig, with a rocket gun to fire lines out to vessels in distress, and the Port Albert bar has claimed its share.

If Warren had had his way we'd be there today. He loves the place, and I can see why. When he stood outside on the main street and began to tell us of the personalities who had occupied the various buildings, and the histories of the buildings themselves, the scene shifted gently back into the past.

I could hear fishermen talking about the new railway line to take their catches up to Melbourne. I saw shipwrights at their work.

I heard the thud and tramp of bullocks and the rumble of the dray wheels on the corduroy as heavy loads left the port for the hills behind.

For just a few moments, I was in Port Albert in 1860. If you ever read this, Warren, thank you.

We went around the town and found the remnants of the old 'official' section. Sandstone buildings falling into ruin, giving in to time, stood among rank growths of weed.

There was one tree which no-one could identify, a graceful thing surviving far from some exotic homeland.

The buildings had the simple and solid dignity of much architecture in the 1850s and 1860s. I'm not going to say much about them, partly because that is another story and partly because you should make the trip yourself and see them before you read much about them. The appearance tells the whole story.

We then followed the old coach route out toward Tarraville, through the punchbowl, a titree forest where more than one hold-up took place in the good old bad old days.

Port Albert was then the home for a very mixed population, including a share of convicts who'd made an unofficial crossing of Bass Strait to seek their freedom.

Even today the narrow track through the titree seems much as it must have been when Cobb and Co and all the oothers pioneered the transport industry in Gippsland.

At Tarraville we saw the nail-less Christ Church, still very much in use and still a very attractive building, with hanging lights I'd love to own. This church was built in 1856 of horizontal boards dropped into slotted uprights, and no nails were used.

Leaving the bell echoing, and hoping that we hadn't offended anybody, we drove to the northern edge of the town and Warren showed us photographs of the way Tarraville had once been.

It had one of Gippsland's first churches, and one of our first schools. It had a tollgate, which must have been unpopular with the bullockies, and four hotels, which were probably rather more popular.

From here we headed along the old coaching route, up the South Gippsland Highway, toward Sale.

In an hour we covered a distance that would have taken a bullocky three days.

Tarraville was a popular first stop on the way north from Port Albert but it is harder to work out where the next stops were, because the road varied with the seasons. There were two main routes.

One went through Longford to Sale, avoiding the hills but having instead to contend with the Longford Morass.

The other route was more direct, over the end of the Strzelecki Ranges, through Willung and Stratford.

The Latrobe River and the Longford Morass must have been frightful barriers. The river was deep and wide enough to have stopped McMillan on his first exploration of the area, and he didn't have to find a way to get a bullock wagon across.

I'm told there was a punt at Longford before the first bridge. There are a few iron fittings on the east bank, just below the Swing Bridge, but I gather these are remnants of the Latrobe Wharf, a steamer wharf in the days of the Lakes steamer trade. There are a few signs of the original bridge but the existing crossing is the one that captures the attention.

It is a 'swing' bridge, designed to pivot on a central pillar so that steamers could pass on either side. This unusual structure is still in excellent condition. It was opened in 1883 or 1884 and was designed by J.H. Grainger, the man who planned Princes Bridge in Melbourne.

North of the Thomson-Latrobe junction the road skirts the Longford Morass, now a game refuge but once merely a bloody great swamp which could sink a dray to the axles in seconds.

At the end of this stretch is the City of Sale, with the remains of the old Raymond Street wharf marking the point at which the steamships gave the Thomson away as a bad job. This was, and is, the Port of Sale.

We left the river and headed west down the Gippsland Track, the Princes Highway, toward Rosedale and our turn into the foothills of the Great Divide.